


catalogue

by sodiumflare



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dehumanization, Disassociation, Found Family Feels, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Post-Movie, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Trauma, soooo much trauma, the counter does not reset to zero, they all take care of each other as much as they can, they do a pretty good job but man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodiumflare/pseuds/sodiumflare
Summary: They know better than to be stupid about guns.Nicky got shot in the mouth. This is after.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 249





	catalogue

**Author's Note:**

> This is the darkest thing I've ever written. Please heed the content warnings and see end notes for explicit descriptions of what I'm warning for.

Nicky tongues the barrel. 

He thought it would be colder, but the gray metal is room temperature, not terribly warmer or colder than the white walls around him. Almost skin temperature; perhaps a little cooler. The taste is oily, and for one brief, hysterical moment he thinks of train station pizza. His stomach roils. He's not sure when he last ate.

The ache in his jaw spreads into his neck, and Nicky pulls the pistol from his lips, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Stares down the dark tunnel of the barrel, bold and dark against the ceiling. He'd walked in on Andy and Booker playing Russian roulette in Yakutsk in the 70's, drunk as skunks on gas station rotgut and laughing about _when in Rome_. He hadn't even tried to stop them, just walked outside to smoke in the snow. They were squatting in an abandoned housing block then, all cold echoing concrete and no small amount of broken glass, and the sounds of gunshots reverberated, but there was no one else there to hear. He can't remember where Joe was.

Nicky relaxes his wrist, places the pistol on the bedspread next to him, ejects the cartridge by reflex. They know better than to be stupid about guns. Uncurls his fingers from the grip. Color returns to his knuckles. The mattress creaks slightly under his shoulders. 

Above him, the ceiling is white, unmarked.

They're in a safe house in southern England, not one they use often. It's spare as a cell and the musty smell lingers, despite the windows thrown open. It's one of Joe's habits, after confinement: he can't stand a closed window between himself and the world. After a particularly hellish few weeks in Tunisia in the 90's, he'd slept in the courtyard of their rented riad for more than a week - by himself; he hadn't been able to let Nicky touch him, and so Nicky had slept on the other side of the wall on a divan, an open window between them. Bizerte wasn't a quiet town by any means, but in the darkest hours of the night, between helicopter patrols overhead, Nicky had been able to hear Joe breathing, uneven like the sea.

It's one of the things they struggle with, that these fantastical bodies of theirs are not machines, in spite of everything. They can hurt and be hurt; they can kill and be killed, although the latter generally wears off. There are times when they have disbanded for a time to relearn what else their bodies can do: Booker had gotten damn good at salsa in Chile. Andy had had a mean Viennese waltz, back in the day. Joe had gotten into mountaineering in the American west, leaving Nicky at the foot of a cliff with his heart in his mouth and a ridiculous hat. They'd had a remarkable amount of creative sex over the centuries. 

Nicky traces the soft skin at the inside of his left elbow. There had been an IV there, and electronic leads taped to his chest. A nasal cannula that sometimes delivered oxygen and sometimes delivered something else.

It wasn't the first time he'd been repeatedly tortured to death, but it was the first time as a science experiment, not counting that time in Paris in the 1500's because Joe said that to call that science was an insult to science. Nicky isn't sure what the last few days have been an insult to. Decency. Humanity. Something like that.

Nicky's questing fingers cross his abdomen, ruck his shirt up, probe the skin near his hipbone where Andy had been gutshot. Imagines a scar, keloid topography. After Quynh was - taken, Andy had pulled against her shackles until her wrists were torn and bleeding in ragged rings. She'd kept the wounds open with her bitten-down nails for months when they'd found her, refusing to let her body erase the marks of what she would always believe was her failure, no matter what they told her.

Her tell is the leather gauntlets, now, and Nicky carries that inside him. He's not sure if the others have noticed. It was Andy who had found him in Silesia in - when was that? 1915, maybe. The bruises to his face and neck had faded and he supposed the bleeding had stopped but she had stood motionless in the doorway of the shed with her hands open at her sides until he had seen her, nodded, and she had stepped forward to cut him free.

He didn't sleep well for some time after that. Andy had sat with him, sometimes, let Nicky lean his chin on her warm shoulder in the dark of her room. He hadn't been able to let Joe or Booker near him then. It's not like that hasn't happened to all of them before, in some way or another. Sometimes things linger. Andy still bitches about a shattered shoulder from the Inquisition. What was that book a few years ago? Joe had read it in a hostel in Bogata, something about bodies keeping score. And they do, Booker had said, it's just that the game doesn't end and the other team gets unlimited substitutions.

Nicky used to want a word with the referee. Now he's not sure there ever was one. 

Booker had waltzed with Andy, sometimes. Nicky can't remember why they stopped. 

The phantom wound at the back of his skull itches. He ignores it, fixes his eyes on the blank white of the ceiling. His palm is warm against his stomach. What a marvel the body is. How fearfully and wonderfully made.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place in a safe house soon after the events of the movie and begins with Nicky distantly contemplating being shot through the mouth. It devolves. There's a lot of ugly here:  
> \- Nicky holds a gun in his mouth  
> \- Nicky stares down a gun barrel  
> \- It is implied that Andy and Booker have both shot themselves in the head, possibly multiple times  
> \- Multiple instances of prolonged and violent sexual assault and rape of Joe and Nicky (and to a lesser extent the rest of the team) are referenced although not described  
> \- In Nicky's memory, Andy self-harms around her wrists and implies it's something she still struggles with  
> \- References to characters being tortured to death  
> \- References to characters undergoing medical experimentation  
> \- References to dehumanization - in a sense, that's what the entire fic is about


End file.
